This game is perfect for my 4.5 year old that is in speech. He has apraxia and this is doing wonders on helping him practice his words in a timely fashion. Also, learning how to take turns and that you don’t always win!
Disclosure: I purchased this item at a promotional price in exchange for sharing my honest feedback. In order to be fair I've reviewed it with the actual price in mind. I depend heavily on reviews when I make purchases online and try to write useful reviews. If find this review helpful, I would appreciate you marking it helpful. Thanks!This is so fun! My kids are 2, 4, and 6, so there are not a ton of board games we can all play together. Zingo combines words and pictures on small plastic tiles. This allows both boys to participate--the pictures are very clear and are good representations of the objects. The words are common ones and easy to read.It is very well designed. The team has definitely thought of the important aspects of a game for ages 4+. The tiles are durable and the mechanism to choose tiles is simple. Less pieces to break! The game includes 78 tiles, which are stored in the dispenser plus 7 double sided cards. To make it more challenging as your kids grow and become quicker at reading and recognizing the words on the cards, you switch from the green side to the red side. The red cards share more words, so there is more competition for the tiles.I am delighted to find a game that is compact to store, durable, interesting for a variety of ages, adaptable, and not based on cartoon characters. I am so glad that I can enjoy playing it too. It isn't complicated but it still holds their attention.The mechanism to deliver the tiles is actually simple and slides smoothly enough that my 2 year old was able to use it. It kept her from stealing the tiles off the cards, too!It's a good value and the designers were thoughtful in their planning. We're going to try it out with the 9 and 13 year old cousins tomorrow and I'll update.
We love this game! Works for my preschooler and toddler. They call the foot stinky toes which makes us laugh every time! Really helps with their vocabulary and my preschooler’s spelling and recognition of words.
This game is so good for all ages. My niece got it as a gift (age 3) and was easily able to play with the pictures. She brought it to visit her great grandpa and he loved playing with all of the kids.
I am a school-based speech-language pathologist working with K-5th grade and received this game as a free donation to my Speech room from ThinkFun in exchange for an honest review. If you have played the regular version of Zingo!, you will have a good idea of how this game works. Zingo! Word-Builder is similar to the original in that the game consists of game boards, plastic tiles, and a "Zing Zinger" (tile machine).The game boards feature 3-letter words, with one or two of the letters missing. On their turn, players move the Zing Zinger to release two tiles and have to figure out if the letters can be used to create words on their game board. The person to complete their board first is the winner. There are two difficulty levels: one side of the board is missing only one letter (in either initial, medial, or final position), and the other side is missing 1-2 of the letters. One thing that is great about the game boards and plastic tiles is that all vowels are highlighted in red. This makes it very visual for beginning readers. Another positive aspect about this game is that the Zing Zinger now has slots on the top so that you can discard your tiles more easily (unlike my other/older version).I played this game with my Speech students (Kindergarten through 2nd grade) and we had a lot of fun! This activity was great for practicing basic decoding skills and trying to figure out whether the created word was a real word or a non-sense word (only real words are allowed). Here are some additional ways you could adapt this game for Speech or reading practice -- many of them targeting phonological awareness skills:*have players identify the beginning/middle/ending sounds*have players try to come up with rhyming words*prior to letting players move the Zing Zinger, ask them about the possible words they could make and which letters they would need*when players create a word, have them make a sentence using the word*after players make a word, ask them what other words they could have made if they had had the letter ___ instead*have players substitute sounds, e.g., "You made the word 'bat'. What word do we get if we say /h/ instead of /b/?"All in all, this is a great game that builds early reading skills. Highly recommended!